The best time to start caring for your brain is right now, at any age.
That said, middle age or younger is the perfect time, says Dr. Douglas Scharre, a neurologist at at the Ohio State College of Medicine.
“Once you start working on your brain health, it could provide a more robust brain reserve which could delay the time to when you may develop memory issues, such as forgetting your keys.”
A new survey from Ohio State University shows 60% of Americans want to prioritize brain health earlier, they just don’t know how.
In a chat with The Post, Scharre shares his major tips and what he does for his own brain.
The best way to stimulate your brain
“The brain needs to be stimulated,” he told The Post. “Use it or lose it.”
Doing something once is not enough. The brain needs you to establish connections between cells, but also maintain those connections with continued use — otherwise unused connections will be pruned away.
In neuroscience, there’s a concept called the “cognitive reserve.” A high cognitive reserve has a lot of healthy brain cells with lots of connections with one another, and is protective against Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
For Scharre, one method of building and keeping up all those connections beats sudoku, reading, and art — though those are all helpful ways to stimulate the brain too.
His winner is socialization.
When you’re talking to someone, you’re reading their facial expressions and analyzing how they’re reacting to the conversation, he explained. Plus, you’re listening and processing information they’re telling them.
You pull into your memory to tell a story. You go back and forth with others, asking your brain to react quickly. “You’re going to make judgments. Your brain is working,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean you should toss your crosswords. Games, reading, art projects, music, sport, a new language, are also great ways to keep your brain stimulated, he said.
Perhaps just as important is cutting passive stimulation, like watching TV and scrolling on your phone, he says.
Passive stimulation isn’t just less useful, it’s actively harmful. Experts say these kinds of activities “deprive” the brain of the work it needs to stay healthy.
Scharre’s brain health check list
Besides getting enough stimulation, Scharre recommends:
- Getting quality sleep: Turn off the lights and TV, address sleep apnea, and maintain routines, he said. Deep sleep is “critical to remove toxins from the brain.”
- Address metabolic health: This means getting treated for high blood pressure, diabetes, and elevated cholesterol. Managing these conditions prevents blood vessels in the brain from getting clogged, he said.
- Manage stress and depression: Depression can cause communication issues in the brain, as well as loss of connections. Long-term stress can make it harder to focus, make decisions, and regulate emotions.
- Eat well: “The brain needs vitamins as it cannot make them internally and so it is important to eat foods that contain them.” He recommends the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables and vegetable oils while reducing red meat and processed sugars.
- Get moving: All physical exercise is good for the brain, but Scharre recommends “a mixture of aerobic (cardio), strength (resistance), flexibility (stretching), and balance are all brain healthy. They stimulate different parts of the brain that lead to more robust brain reserve by building up connections in the brain.”
To care for his own brain, Scharre is a fan of tracking. It can help identify areas that need improvement or catch issues early, such as high blood pressure.
“You can track your diet, sleep, exercise, brain stimulation activities, socialization, blood pressure, labs for cholesterol and sugar. All of it if you want.”
